Victoria Carranza is the Chief Business Development Officer at One Cool Earth, a SLO-area nonprofit that supports outdoor education, neighborhood gardens and community tree plantings. I met Victoria through Rory Aronson, who I photographed last month. When Rory told me about Victoria's work with One Cool Earth I was interested in meeting her, but when he told me about Victoria's other current project, I knew for sure that she'd make a great photographic subject - Victoria and her husband-to-be Brian are building a Tiny Home.

Tiny Homes are small houses sized to fit on a trailer. That means they're usually not more than about 8 1/2 feet wide and 20 feet long. With housing continuing to get more and more expensive in San Luis Obispo, it's easy to see the appeal of something small, simple, and affordable. Victoria and Brian are building their Tiny Home in Nipomo, where her family has made some space for them to work. However, building their Tiny Home on a trailer means that, when it's finished, home can be just about wherever they'd like it to be.

While we were working on these photographs, Victoria walked me through their home-in-progress, and talked about the process of getting rid of the years of accumulated "stuff" that won't fit in their new home, and coming to terms with the fact that most of that stuff isn't really necessary in the first place. She even said that she's bonded with her grandmother over it, since her grandmother is going through the same process of simplification in her golden years.